There’s this rumour making the rounds of the IIMB gossip circuit that one of the IIMB guy’s mother was approached by an IIMA girl’s mother; who offered the girl’s hand in marriage along with ten megarupees of dowry. The guy’s mother refused, on the grounds that the girls’ family were Punjabi baniyas, while they were UP baniyas. Or the other way around. Who gives a damn about the finer distinction between baniyas anyway?1
When I first heard about this story, I got enthu and started thinking about how one could use rejected dowry offers to estimate the monetary value of a religious/ regional/ caste/ subcaste barrier. My initial enthusiasm evaporated later on. It’s actually a very silly idea, because different people will have wildly differing valuations of a community barrier2. My parents, for example, are getting so disturbingly desperate for grandchildren that they would have a zero valuation. Other people might have an infinite valuation.
More importantly, the offer might not even have been rejected because of the subcaste difference. It’s possible that the guy simply thought the girl was irritating and couldn’t stand the thought of being married to her. Citing subcaste differences might have been a politer, more face-saving way of saying no than saying ‘I’m sorry, but she’s an irritating cow, and being married to her would drive me up the wall.’3
The second rumour is about this guy who joined my employer in the same batch of campus recruitment as me. The story goes that somebody with all the right caste and astrological details and what not offered their daughter and fifteen megarupees of dowry. The guy’s parents practically laughed in their faces at this low offer.
This is astounding. If we take only the guy’s pre-tax annual salary, fifteen megarupees is a valuation at a P/E ratio of approximately 19. And this was rejected. It looks like the market for grooms is as stretched as the market for securities these days.
So what’s a girl- and her parents- to do in these days of overheated valuations? That, dear reader, will be the subject of several upcoming posts. These two rumours have gotten me thinking about dowry as a concept, and there will be lots of blogging on it this week. Until then, do read these somewhat related links: For Love or Money I and For Love or Money II.
1: As is evident from the mother’s reactions, baniyas themselves do. I was asking a rhetorical question.
2: As any MBA will tell you, any valuation I would have calculated would have been wrong anyway.
3:Which is what I would have said. But then I don’t see the point of saving other peoples’ faces.
Dude,
This one has finally forced me to add you to my bloglines. Although must confess to having printed out some of your past posts for wider circulation!
Unusual take on a sensitive subject. Looking forward to more.
OK – how does one become a baniya?
[…] Back to dowry. As I mentioned in this post, fifteen megarupees is now considered too low a price for the privilege of getting your daughter married to someone she’s never met. However, there’s evidently no shortage of people willing to cough up the market clearing price. […]
Nilu: I think you can call yourself a baniya from Gujarat by obtaining a membership card to the famed (mythical?) ABC(D?)EFG association.
I guess megarupees=million
Have you invented this word?
Because there are 5 result on this word if you google it and 2 are related to this blog post.
You can just say million and free your readers from Google it and pain of realization of their ignorance about the new slang invented.
I think the reason Aadisht uses megarupees is because he doesn’t want to use lakhs, crores, millions. The word conveys the essence of what he is saying without getting into distracting issues of “heavens 15 million rupees”.
“If we take only the guy’s pre-tax annual salary, fifteen megarupees is a valuation at a P/E ratio of approximately 19.”
That’s it? IIM grads starting salary is only 8 lakhs per annum? I’m sorry, I don’t mean it as an insult, but genuinely surprised that it is that “low” after all those media stories about IIM salaries.
Dowry from Indian Muslims prespective
http://www.siasat.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?t=429
well , considering dowry in marriage is itself smwhat like selling your self or trying to purchase the faith of other .But alas! value of faith cannt be calculated from fin. ratios.
I appreciate the hidden question which this story arises as its different 4 different readers and leave readers in delima of whats major point of discussion !
also gives reader freedom to cm up with moral of the story!
looking frwd to other posts
Another dowry experience:
A family of the boy of Jaipur started showing interest in B family of the girl and got it initiated through some one else i.e. middle man, known to both the families. On their repeated requests family B visited family Awho claims to be very rich as they are in transport business. On talking with them it is obvious that family A is hardly educated and the boy concerned was doing MBA first from some donation college but recently got shifted to some institute in Jaipur. As such the boy was found to be below average and while talking he was much below the standard. As A family, they engaged somebody, a Maulana type of person to interact with the father of the girl. Funny thing about the person was that he was finding a lot faults in the very community to which the family A belongs. Instead they called him for high lighting their status. It was a horrible affair the family B could not with-stand rubbish he was talking.
Later, they visited family-B and called the father of the girl to meet them in some J E‘s house nearby the house of Family-B out of their sheer arrogance. The parents of the girl told them to come to their house as they were getting ready for leaving for some urgent personal work within half an hour. More over there was no information about indent of their visit. After sometime they once again came but this time direct to the house of the girl’s parents, of course, with due information. They all came with their families and every thing they showed was alright. After spending quite a few hours, they said that it was all okay and left. After about an hour, they sent their emissary, the middleman with the dowry demand and some other conditions. The parents of the girl were asked to give Rs. 35 lakhs in cash and an assurance of entertaining the baraat in a five star hotel. When they were asked to give a list of persons likely to be accommodated in the hotel they could not reply. The girl’s parents felt stunt as to what they should have done in such circumstances.